The board is charged with determining whether or not petitions have received enough signatures to either go before the legislature or be placed on the ballot. Today's decision came down to a technical decision involving duplicate signatures and a deadline.

Raise Michigan, the group seeking to increase the minimum wage, needed to collect at least 258,088 signatures. It turned in petitions in late May, but the restaurant-backed People Protecting Michigan Jobs (PPMJ) challenged them, saying the group didn't have enough valid signatures.

Staff from the Michigan Secretary of State's elections bureau analyzed a sample of signatures and determined there were an estimated 259,776 valid signatures – 1,668 more than was required.

However, on Wednesday the Secretary of State received another challenge. PPMJ found that some signatures in the sample pulled by the Secretary of State's office were duplicated elsewhere in the total body of signatures.

If the BSC rejected this challenge, the petition would pass, said Director of Elections Chris Thomas. If it took the challenge into account, the petition would fail, he said.

"If you were to vote to accept those challenges, our recommendation would be insufficiency," Thomas said.

PPMJ attorney John Pirich, with Honigman Miller Schwartz, urged the board to reject the petition due to multiple arguments, including the allegedly invalid duplicate signatures.

"This petition woefully fails on its face with regard to the total number of signatures necessary. Period," Pirich said.

Mark Brewer, legal counsel for Raise Michigan and an attorney with Goodman Acker, told the board the challenge had come too late.

"Deadlines mean something in the law," Brewer said. He urged the board not to make a "special exception just for them," and argued they had no authority under the law to do so.

"You can only do what you're authorized to do and you are not authorized by the statute to accept late challenges," Brewer said.

"So you are suggesting then that we count invalid signatures?" asked the BSC's Republican chair, Colleen Pero.

Brewer reiterated that the board didn't have the authority.

PPMJ in its filing had argued that this effort was moot anyway, since the legislature had repealed the law.The legislature earlier this year, in a separate action, raised the minimum wage to $9.25 by 2018 and repealed the law that the initiative petition seeks to amend.

However, Brewer cited a prior court case that he said indicated the petition could go forward even with the original law having been repealed.

The board doesn't have the authority to determine legal questions, according to Thomas. The staff took no position on that portion of PPMJ's argument.

Attorney General Chief Legal Counsel Matthew Schneider did take a position, saying the petition was of improper form since it seeks to amend a law that does not exist.

Democratic Board member Julie Matuzak said the SBC had already approved the petition's form before the legislature had decided to "mess around" with people's right to vote.

"We are past that point... we approved the form, the form stood and we agreed to this form at that point," Matuzak said.

Brewer also argued that some of the alleged duplicates could be members of the same household with the same name.

"You cannot prove there are duplicates in this filing or in any filing without being sure that you have the same person," Brewer said.

Pirich disagreed, saying you could tell from the signatures filed who had signed multiple times.

"These aren't different people living at the same address who have signed this petition multiple times," Pirich said.

The board gathered evidence and heard from attorneys for nearly two hours, and then recessed for two hours to allow staff to reexamine the signatures for duplications.

During the review, the staff did find one instance where two people of the same name residing at the same household had both signed the petition. But overall, staff estimated the signatures with duplicates taken into account were 3,900 short.

"We would make a recommendation that this petition is insufficient," Thomas said.Ultimately the board voted 3-1 not to certify the petition. Matuzak cast the lone vote in favor of certification.

Raise Michigan spokesperson Frank Houston said a lawsuit is possible, although no final decision has been made.

Because of the $9.25 legislation, he said, "We know workers in Michigan are going to get a raise. The question is, is Democracy being thrown out along the way?"